


arm's length

by popocco



Category: Gintama
Genre: Ableist Language, Alcohol, Anal Sex, Casual Sex, Hurt/Comfort/Hurt, M/M, Misery in general, Missing Scene, No Lube, Reunion, Seduction, Shamelessness in general, self-indulgent trauma fic ahhhhahahahaha (the smoke clears and i am completely dead on the pavement), shameless flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-14 22:09:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19282177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popocco/pseuds/popocco
Summary: Takasugi steps out for some fresh air, and comes across an unexpected acquaintance.





	arm's length

**Author's Note:**

> i got possessed and wrote this entire thing start to finish in two and a half days lol!! this shits not edited!!!
> 
> i have two hijigin in the oven rn and one of them is literally almost completely done, but the holy spirit of rarepairs (is this is a rarepair? it shouldnt be so it probably is) came to me from on high and said "bitch, do this immediately" and i was like "ok"
> 
> note about the warnings:
> 
> \- i really really dislike insults on the basis of perceived intelligence, and as you probably have not noticed i do pretty much everything in my power to avoid using them, but i couldn't get around it this time. takasugi is fucken Going Through It here
> 
> \- there's only one detailed description of a nasty injury, and it's not by any means graphic, but it's there
> 
> that's it, i think. have "fun"
> 
>  **UPDATE:** edited to fix the dialect (mostly sakamoto's)! i never know how to gauge when the use of apostrophes becomes obnoxious, but sakamoto is pretty obnoxious anyways so it's fine

Takasugi Shinsuke is not an abnormally angry person. He steadfast and level-headed within carnage and a shrewd negotiator without, a clever opportunist. He simply would not have experienced the success in his endeavours that he has, if he were a man easily swayed to fits of passion.

He is not angry.

He is simply _very fucking_ _irritated._

Nizou is out hunting again, and the needle-sharp apprehension that Takasugi feels towards this fact has been poking holes into every attempt he has tried to sustain tonight at just continuing his careful monitoring and management of the elements within his most immediate control.

Nizou _is_ one of these elements. He, an eager volunteer and marvellously suited to the task besides, is an absolutely necessary factor in the development of the Benizakura prototype now, and taking it afield to give it experience is exactly what Takasugi assigned to him. It is a job intimately perfect for this man, and Takasugi has absolute trust in the judgment he made himself to bestow it as he did.

So the budding worry in his mind about this very thing is completely unacceptable.

It has been spreading its roots throughout the entire evening, impervious to every manner of distraction Takasugi could think to throw at it, from drink to song to company and back to drink again.

With brittle tension in his fingers, yet too bodily agitated to keep a shamisen in his lap, he’s found himself out for an evening stroll of all absurd things.

Sitting across from Matako and Takechi’s squabbling soured an entire bottle of one of his most expensive distillations of shochu, and he fully has a mind to compensate himself for the loss. By the time the early spring chill has sapped some of the senseless ill temper roiling about persistently through the span of his bones and muscles, a suitable opportunity to do so will surely present itself.

Takasugi has been exceptionally careful of late, never venturing offdeck of the Kiheitai’s smaller mobile base unless his presence was an absolutely vital factor. The commotion following his (admittedly hasty and ill-conceived) attempt at the Shogun lasted a mere handful of weeks, and though he has no doubt that the Shinsengumi are still dragging their snouts through the mud 180 degrees from his trail somewhere, his name and approximate likeness faded from the public’s attention easier than those of some moderately talented teenager with half a singing voice.

For that reason precisely he has kept himself hidden, to a near paranoid extent, during these first tentative steps towards the ultimate result. He has yet to meet the swordsmith himself, and while Takechi’s preclusions make him an utterly loathsome conversationalist (and human being), his barometer for easily manipulable individuals rivals Takasugi’s own- the assurance that this singularly insecure man has all but placed himself in their control of his own volition is trustworthy.

Contact with the Harusame space pirates, on the other hand- an affair needing a more sensitive touch, that.

Given the unconditional choice, he’d have attended to their first official talk himself- the opportunity for which, alone, required _months_ of circumspection and no small amount of capital. This agreement holds the potential to become the single most important component of Takasugi’s entire ambition. Regardless of its independent ingenuity, the Kiheitai needs bodies in the immediate future. In the more distant future: mobility. _Range_.

But the terms of this discussion were absolute, and risking an attempt to circumvent them so early on could easily become disastrous. Negotiations will take place off-planet, at the heart of the pirates’ territory aboard one of their own ships, under the watch of their lieutenants. And extraterrestrial travel is a feat Takasugi himself cannot attempt within his own criteria for worthy risk, not while the government is in any capacity aware of his presence in Edo.

He has no doubt that given the first chance, he could spy an infinite number of enticing cracks in the Harusame’s titanic wall of personnel. To mark at his leisure, to contemplate digging into. He _aches_ to finger at the skein of every possible advantage therein, waiting for him to pull out and lay bare. Takasugi feels a bitterly excited disappointment, confined for now at the bottom of the well he keeps for his impatience, that he cannot yet even approach for himself to scent the weaknesses in this arrogant rutting beast.

But Bansai is a worthy proxy. He boasts an even greater affinity for music than Takasugi, after all. He has the same inexorable instinct towards timing, motion, and observation. He implicitly understands the importance of familiarizing oneself with an instrument, gauging the give and the tension in its strings, before one can begin to truly play it.

Matako is, as ever, a bullet loaded in the chamber. Takasugi need only lift a finger and she’ll fly, but until the time arrives, he can but keep the gun itself well-oiled and in working order.

So here his thoughts stray back to Nizou, again. Okada Nizou the manslayer. Stalking about the streets somewhere, doing what he does best. Doing what he simply does naturally. Swords are made to kill, after all. For what else are they to be relied upon?

Ah, and that’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it. A sword in one’s own grasp follows the path that is given to it. But when its hilt slips out of hand, who can say where the blade will fall?

When a sword is lost, whether through some defect in its own design or too loose a grip from its wielder, it cannot be reforged. There is no recourse, then, but to have it replaced.

Inconvenient. Costly. But Takasugi has the resolve to do what is necessary. He puts the thought from his mind.

Instead he considers something absently, while he breathes the crisp nighttime air breezing through the canal at his side. Perhaps a far more simple physical solution to his unrest might have been available to him, back aboard the Kiheitai’s inconspicuous barge, idly plucking at some diverting new melody by the window as he is so wont to do after sundown in clement weather such as this. Bansai rarely fails where every other of Takasugi’s preferred indulgences are left wanting.

An ultimately trifling thought, as long as space travel retains the same mundane inconvenience of time as every other mode of transportation in existence. The cool wind has been, for its part, steadily adequate in soothing the heat of his restlessness. Takasugi imagines some intimidating, stony-faced and brutal pirate confronted with Bansai’s unique sense of presence, and feels a burgeoning smirk help the effort along. The mild scent of a budding willow meets and passes him by on the breeze.

In the isolating luxury of the waterside street where he saw fit to disembark, Takasugi has foregone the visible security that any manner of concealing headwear would offer. The foolishness of sporting a sedge hat in the dark and relative warm won an easy victory over the boring logic of hiding his face. He has the tangible, real security of his knife, sheathed solid and comforting against his bare skin where it’s hidden beneath his obi. The odd, naked weightlessness of his hips without a more substantial blade keeps him as wary as he could need.

The street is largely quiet and empty but for some few visibly moneyed pedestrians. And so accordingly minuscule is the spark of hungry, frenzied anxiety lit at the base of Takasugi’s neck. He came ashore to sate an urge, a different kind of than this, and that is what he will do.

He’s been far too thoroughly careful already, to allow himself susceptibility to an impulse so laughably small. Patience is a skill he has nurtured with too much generosity to let it fail him with any ease.

None of these worthless flakes of kindling here know his name, or see his face.

They don’t know anything. They don’t see anything.

Enviable, isn’t it? He might have wished to be like them, once.

They’ll have their use eventually, in time- he’ll see the whole rotting forest burned down to its roots, if it means he can scare even a few clever crows from the boughs.

For now, though- just for now- Takasugi can fool himself into walking beneath them with any pretense of comfort.

He’s already passed by a few private-looking tearooms opposite the canal. One of those might do, Takasugi dulls himself into speculating.

Every storefront in sight is opulently simple, barely a whisper of conversation audible beyond any of them. Quiet and solitude seem to have found Takasugi as easily as they ever do, and for a rare mercy, he finds himself in reciprocation.

“ _Takasugiiiii!!!!_ Takasugi, ain’t it?! Ahh--ha _ha!!_ Been a hundred years, feels like!”

A bright, happy, _cataclysmically loud_ peal of laughing excitement pierces through the still of the evening and hits Takasugi dead centre with the sharp and jarring chill of an arrowhead burying itself in his back. For half a moment he stands frozen in shock.

“It _is_ Takasugi, right? Ya sure look like ‘im! Takasugi! Takasugi Shin- huh. Waitta minute. Shin…. Shintarou? Nah, that ain’t it.”

Takasugi _Shinsuke_ already has a white knuckle grip on the hilt of his knife when he turns on his heel with the momentum of a suicide rush. With every urgent stride towards him the owner of this voice grows taller and more familiar, and none of it matters because he is still hollering most of Takasugi’s full name in the middle of the fucking street.

“Nice to see ya!!” the idiot beams when Takasugi is in arm’s length. “How’ve ya _oogh--”_ With a distantly satisfying gag he loses the rest of his greeting in his long and skinny throat when Takasugi wrenches him sideways off the street by his scarf. His geta fill the silence almost on par with his voice with all their haphazard clattering, until the two of them come to a halt deep into an alley, where Takasugi slams him into the side of a building with the tip of his knife pointed up at his throat.

“Keep your fucking voice down,” Takasugi warns, pressing it against the adam’s apple of one Sakamoto Tatsuma.

He laughs, uproariously, with an expression of bewildered glee. “Ya sure haven’t changed much,” he grins. His smile fills the whole bottom half of his face.

Takasugi harshly pries it open with his thumb and puts half the blade of his dagger inside of Sakamoto’s huge, stupid mouth, flat on top of his tongue.

“ _Shut up_ ,” he snarls, blood throbbing white hot with fury through his body faster than he can feel it. “Or is that something you’re still utterly incapable of? Do you need a hands-on lesson?”

Takasugi’s heart is pounding like a war drum and the arm brandishing his knife is motionless, steady as the solid shaft of a naginata.

Sakamoto blinks down at him, his black sniper glasses lost somewhere on the ground back out on the street. He makes a weird and useless, if amicable, noise around the knife and finger in his mouth. Takasugi’s thumb is wet with a small amount of spit, and Sakamoto’s breath is fire hot on the skin of his knuckles nearby.

“Shake your head yes or no,” Takasugi instructs him, removing his unarmed hand from Sakamoto’s face and replacing it in a tight threat around the fabric of his scarf. “Are you physically able to speak in anything _near_ a subtle volume?”

Sakamoto’s eyes crease enough at the edges to make a complete smile, added to the careful quirk of the corners of his mouth around Takasugi’s knife. He nods, once, deliberately slow to avoid colliding the blade with his top row of teeth.

Takasugi glares up at him, unmoving, and gets no further reaction. He sighs harshly through his teeth, and pulls his knife out and back down to its scabbard.

Sakamoto beams, and for an explosive half-second of immeasurable lividity Takasugi thinks he’s going to laugh again. That infuriating, leading and halting _laugh_.

But he just makes a small “hee!” through his teeth and relaxes his elbows down off the wall, where he’d thrown them with his palms open in surrender the moment he was pinned there.

“That was excitin’,” he says, like he just got off a rollercoaster at a goddamn theme park. “You always were quite the assertive fella. Glad ta see that’s still the same.”

Takasugi’s mind is still catapulting between rage, panic, and some terrible unnamed species of excitement that seems on its surface like simple nauseated disgust, but sits happily atop the lungs like an opportunity about to make itself known. He keeps his eye on Sakamoto’s every subtle move, with terrifying recognition that he has absolutely no idea what to expect.

Sakamoto gives a quick glance down both directions of the neat and narrow passage he’s been threatened into, then casually settles back on Takasugi with an easy expression.

“So? Where’d ya wanna take me? Is there some fancy hidden Members Only kinda place down here?”

Takasugi’s jaw is so tightly set in frustration and nervousness that it feels as if it could shatter, but he manages, tenacious and _assertive_ as he is, to grit through it.

“What do you want?” he asks, leveling his breathing as invisibly as he can, setting his stance wider and more open.

If it’s to be a negotiation, then, rather than an overt demand from the man who just cornered a national fugitive without even using a weapon, Takasugi can play the part. A confident sneer finds its way so easily on to his lips that he is filled with utter hatred for it.

“I’m afraid my options are _limited_ right now, but I’m sure we can reach some agreement.” Takasugi shifts one of his hips and crosses his arms low across his middle, fluidly, _so_ easily. It’s so despicably easy he could laugh.

“What… ya got an allergy? I’m not picky ya know, you can just choose whatever kinda restaurant ya like.”

Sakamoto is still standing perfectly comfortable with his long back against the wall, hands in his pockets, shoulders slouched. Smiling down at Takasugi with an open look in his eyes, completely devoid of any real intention whatsoever.

Takasugi frowns.

“What do you _want_ ,” he repeats, his words measured and patient far beyond the uncertainty they come from.

Sakamoto just brandishes that pleasant expression of his, a flawless mask of mild confusion. He always was an irritatingly competent actor.

“I’m asking why you flagged me down in the middle of the road like that, Sakamoto Tatsuma.”

An actor the man may be, but Takasugi is an exceedingly persistent critic.

Sakamoto’s face brightens instantly, inexplicably. Takasugi’s stomach goes cold and hard with dread.

“ _That’s_ what yer gettin’ at? I just wanna catch up! I didn’t think I’d ever get ta see you again, and here you are. Simple as that.” His eyebrows bunch only the slightest bit inwards, and he reaches forward to clap Takasugi on the shoulder.

His overlarge and gangly hand lingers there, tightens, then gives a quick jostle. Just like-

Exactly the way he would do ten years ago, with familiarity and affection so easy he made them look attainable to anyone at all.

Something inside Takasugi wrenches loose with a sticky, violent protest.

An absolutely hideous and agonizing kind of glee blooms through his entire heart, crushingly heavy, like a fatally wounded man plunging underwater.

So that’s what it is. _That’s_ what this is.

Takasugi is utterly helpless to the laughter that rips itself up through his stomach and throat in sharp, nauseatingly painful spasms. Ruining the corners of his lips into some grimacing mockery of a death mask. Stinging at his eyes. It sounds like it always does coming out of his mouth- breathless, delighted, and completely repulsive.

He doesn’t know, does he? Sakamoto. He doesn’t know anything.

Hilarious. Perfect.

Takasugi pulls himself from his fit with practiced composure, easing up out of the hunch in his back to expel the contortions of his smile in a swift humming sigh through the nose.

“Simple as that,” he echoes, grinning toothesomely.

“Just so,” Sakamoto nods happily down at him.

They end up at a place with large private sitting rooms, at Sakamoto’s enthusiastic recommendation, with a wide table of expensive food and drink. He chattered the entire way there about all his meaningless preoccupations back on Earth: his favourite cabaret club, a woman he fancies there, the neighbourhoods and bars and restaurants he missed while he was away, some different woman named Mutsu who disagrees with his frivolous habits. Nothing of any consequence whatsoever, which Takasugi was able to easily feign engagement in listening to with an occasional “Hm” or “Is that so”.

Sakamoto’s idea of “catching up” has thus far been to bore Takasugi half out of his mind. The absence of a single inquiry in his general direction, at the very least, is convenient.

He’s moved on to a different topic, Takasugi realizes over a sip of something not anywhere near sufficiently luxurious to warrant its price. The subject at hand is still a bore, though this time due to the fact that Takasugi already knows about it.

Sakamoto is proudly gesticulating about his beloved Kaientai, his empire, his _family_ or some such. He doesn’t seem to intend to regale Takasugi with the suitably heroic tale of its beginnings, content to go on at length about the planets he’s visited and their locales and people, and about his own persistent “sea” sickness. (As if Takasugi could ever forget, after the way the two of them first met.)

None of this is interesting, not worthy of note or committing to memory.

What _is_ interesting are the things that Sakamoto pointedly does _not_ mention. The exact size of his fleet. Whether or not his ships deal in or carry weaponry. The approximate scale of his influence, financial or otherwise. The names of any of his affiliate companies, or the nature of those partnerships.

Takasugi can’t tell if these omissions are intentional, or the product of Sakamoto’s lackadaisical outlook. This, especially, he is _keenly_ interested in.

His immediate plans may have some room for improvement.

Initially the goal was simple: entertain an extremely foolish, extremely wealthy man until he eagerly ate and drank himself into oblivion, then make off with whatever useful things his wallet had to offer. Credit cards, private phone numbers, business cards- whatever had the most promise.

Now, though…

The Kaientai was certainly already a known quantity to Takasugi, long before this ignoramus tried to give him a heart attack on the street then invite him out for dinner. Its interstellar clout would be more difficult to _not_ know about. Takasugi also knew that, through whatever windfall of good fortune he had tripped into headfirst to land there, Sakamoto Tatsuma was the man at the helm.

It had occurred to him, long before, to approach this old “acquaintance” of his with a business offer. Before he considered the Harusame, even- an organization of the Kaientai’s size, and an ostensibly legal one at that, seemed to be the perfect fit as both material, fiscal security, and as an irresistibly whopping destrier of a Trojan Horse.

Too good to be true, he had decided, and left it at that. Literally too _good_ \- the potential number of scruples likely to be held by anything connected to the biggest coward Takasugi ever had the misfortune to trust at his back would surely not be worth whatever benefits he could wring from their acquaintance.

Factually, none of this has changed. In all likelihood it is still a substantial waste of Takasugi’s time and effort to attempt some sort of mutual business terms.

So that’s not what he’s going to do.

“What about you, then?” With intriguingly suspicious timing, Sakamoto has finally extended a question to Takasugi, through an impolitely large mouthful of first class seafood. “Ya never did strike me as the enterprisin’ type. How’ve ya been gettin’ on?”

Takasugi’s own appetite for the heavily extravagant menu of this establishment was sated some time ago already, and he’s been idly diverting himself with packing his pipe. He withdraws a long coil of hemp from his sleeve, briefly contemplating his answer.

“Mostly luck, more or less,” he decides, while he dips his wrist towards the paper lamp on Sakamoto’s corner of the table and uses it to light his wick. “Opportunities come my way every now and then. I take them at my leisure.”

“I see! Sounds like rough work,” Sakamoto comments, based on absolutely nothing. He reaches across the table to refill Takasugi’s cup, meeting his gaze with one of those smiles.

Takasugi intently keeps their eye contact while he ignores the drink, curling his lips around the tip of his pipe and taking a very long, slow first drag. He exhales with a smile of his own.

“Oh? I don’t think I’ve even told you yet, what exactly it is that I do for a living.”

“Some kinda mercenary work, right?” Sakamoto replies, undaunted, and fills his own cup.

Interesting.

Very interesting, indeed.

“And what makes you think that?” Takasugi just can’t seem to stop smiling.

“ _Ah-_ hahahaha!!” There it is again. He was beginning to wonder when it would next rattle his eardrums. “Just a hunch, I guess! I can’t really picture ya doin’ much else.”

Sakamoto drains his cup in one grand swig, and begins to fill it again.

“That’s how ya banged up yer eye, ain’t it?”

Takasugi’s teeth come down on to his pipe’s metal mouthpiece. Cloying, saccharine pressure twists some old and ugly thing in his chest further into a knot.

He really doesn’t know, does he? He doesn’t know. How could he know.

Takasugi holds the smoke in his mouth, but doesn’t especially taste it, not even on the exhale across his tongue.

“A somewhat serious case of conjunctivitis, actually,” he grimaces. “Should clear up well as long as I keep it covered and medicated.”

He initiates another staring contest across the table. “It itches terribly, sometimes.”

Sakamoto’s eyebrows leap in surprise, and his head falls back into another Laugh. When he’s finished: “Well, that’s an awful shame! Try not to scratch at it too much. It’ll only get worse.”

Takasugi’s mouth curves spitefully. “The doctor said that, too.”

Sakamoto nods sagely with a reverent-sounding hum, like he’s just borne witness to some wise and timely prophecy from a messenger of the gods themselves. The utter simpleton.

He takes a thoughtful sip from his cup. “I get it- some lines a work don’t bear much talkin’ bout. Things like that’ll always exist in this big ol’ world of ours.” A furtive glance up at Takasugi again, while is head is still part of the way bowed to drink some more.

Takasugi suddenly doesn’t have much of a taste for tobacco anymore. He upends his pipe over the ashtray on the table, and empties it with a harsh loud strike against the brim. He wraps his fingers around his untouched refill.

“Indeed.”

He doesn’t feel like drinking anymore, either.

It isn’t by any means unexpected, but the sensation of being deeply, physically _tired_ sweeps across Takasugi’s realization with an almost startling kind of swiftness. His stomach is adequately full, of food and alcohol, but while this very easily could be the cause he knows that it isn’t.

He is simply exhausted. He is tired to the point of delirium of being _patient_ with this unbearably talkative and tight-lipped man.

Takasugi continues to trace the rim of his cup, his tendons aching to seize it and toss the contents into Sakamoto’s eyes so he can step over the table and straddle him with a knife at his throat. He settles for lifting it to his mouth after a time.

The drink goes down easily as ever, but finishes more acrid on his tongue. And then that feels thick outside of his mouth, when he uses it to swipe a stray drop from his lip.

“Ya know,” Sakamoto starts to comment, and with a glance Takasugi marks him shifting comfortably to lean the side of his face on the back of his own hand. Takasugi suspects, nonplussed, that he _does_ know, yes.

“Ya seem ta carry yerself kinda different now, if ya don’t mind me sayin’ so.”

Takasugi feels the bridge of his nose wrinkle on the short and angry laugh he lets burst forth from his lips.

So the time has come for _this_ now, has it? Reminiscing about the Good Old Days. Pretending with a simpering, nostalgic smile that there is any joy whatsoever to be found in reflecting on all that desperate fear and bloodshed. Looking back with some sickening famiscile of fondness, for the “companionable” gaps between endless, screaming-hoarse nightmares.

He has no need to look _back_ on any of it. There will be none of this fumbling suggestion towards wound-licking.

“Bullshit,” Takasugi retorts, feeling the skin around his eye begin to crease beyond his own intention. He’s tired. He’s tired of this. “I’m the same man I’ve ever been.”

He wants all the same things he ever did. He hasn’t changed.

Everybody _else_ changed. They ran away. They stopped trying. They died, or became someone different.

It’s just him now.

Sakamoto laughs, and to the completely negligible credit that it deserves, it’s a slightly more subdued thing than usual. “Naw, sorry, that ain’t what I meant! I said it before, right? Yer definitely still the same.”

He did say that, didn’t he. After Takasugi put a dagger into his mouth.

“See, what I mean-- hmm. I dunno how to say it, exactly, but you’ve got some kinda-” Takasugi catches him flick those disarmingly bright, wide awake eyes of his down, to the place where Takasugi’s collars meet comfortably loose just above his navel.

_Oh?_

Now this _is_ interesting.

“-Kind of a more, hmm, _mature_ sorta presence, now. Ya know what I mean?” He inclines the tip of the bottle at the table forward, waiting for Takasugi to offer his cup.

“That just sounds natural,” Takasugi replies, withholding it for the moment to his own steadily mounting glee, “after such a substantial amount of time.”

“True,” Sakamoto grins. It could very well be his imagination, but Takasugi detects the smallest edge to this one. Perhaps it’s just the feeling of seeing someone bare their teeth to him.

“But then again, I’ve not matured a single bit!” He seems completely delighted by this. “That’s what everyone keeps tellin’ me, at least.”

With an exceedingly calm prickle of dissatisfaction Takasugi expects a particular pair of names to come out of Sakamoto’s mouth. To be quite honest, he is somewhat shocked that those two specific elephants in this very small room have yet to stomp on his toes. It feels like only a matter of time now.

And that is a matter all of its own.

In the moment, however, there is a surprisingly entertaining type of game well and truly afoot, one that Takasugi expected to see all but independently to its natural conclusion. The cooperation he’s started to receive is a welcome bit of excitement.

“Heehee, Mutsu is gonna be _really_ angry this time ‘round,” Sakamoto titters to himself as he picks at some more at his food, and Takasugi definitely senses some connection between this and the more subtle, nonverbal conversation taking place.

“This woman, Mutsu-” He finds himself in the mood for a quick bout of explicit provocation. “A lover of yours, I’m guessing?”

From what he disinterestedly gathered from “listening” to Sakamoto before, this is not remotely the case. That’s what makes it such a likely piece of bait to put on the line.

Sakamoto’s face has done something that Takasugi is sure, beyond any doubt, that he has _never_ seen it do before. His intolerably loud mouth is only half-open, in this utterly flabbergasted shape around an attempt to repeat the thing that was just posited towards him, at a total loss for words.

(Takasugi thinks this can be counted as its own individual type of victory.)

“ _Lo--_ ” Sakamoto chokes, then he’s plowed right on to his back by the most catastrophic fit of mirth he’s shown all night. Takasugi can hear it squeezing tears out of his eyes on the other side of the table, where the man is literally rolling about with his hands at his stomach.

This continues some time longer than Takasugi has the patience for. He entertains himself with the possibility of Sakamoto just choking to death over there and sparing him the headache.

Alas, no such luck.

“Not the case, then,” Takasugi offers, as Sakamoto bodily pulls himself upright again on the edge of the table, still largely overcome by his own humour.

“Ahoho, oh, _yer_ in trouble now too,” he gasps, wiping his eyes. “She would _kill_ ya for that. Aaahhh-”

Sakamoto makes a reach for the bottle to top himself off again, but Takasugi thinks that he has had quite enough, and that _he_ has not had nearly enough yet. He swipes it away and takes a swig straight from the mouth of it.

He can feel Sakamoto’s eyes on his throat when he swallows.

“Nah, Mutsu, see- she’s my _partner_ ,” Sakamoto has gone on to elucidate, now that he’s made it through the rest of his insipid giggles. As if the word means much of anything. It doesn’t mean “lover” here, obviously.

“We’re here to do some business, but I wanted to play around a bit! Since I’m finally back on Earth again, ya know? She said no, o’ course. So I booked it away soon as I saw an openin’, haha!”

“Sounds like quite a forgiving associate,” Takasugi comments flatly, taking a longer drink from the bottle- his bottle, now. Goodness, the extent to which he _does not_ care!

“Ah- _hahahah_ , not at _all_ ,” Sakamoto insists, reaching across the table to steal leftovers from Takasugi’s side of the spread.

“She started shootin’ at me when she saw me making a break for it,” he says through his mouthful, appearing luminously happy about this.

“Good thing you’re so skilled at running away, then,” Takasugi says, with a wickedly congratulatory smile. It feels like it could split his face wide open.

“Yup!” Sakamoto agrees with another easy smile of his own.

He leans back on to the palms of his hands, and asks, “And you, Takasugi? Ya got any _lovers_ of yer own ta brag about?” His gaze, vacantly optimistic as always, meets Takasugi steadily across the table. “I don’t mind admittin’ to it, ya know- I’m pretty curious now!”

Eager for the end of these exhausting subtleties, Takasugi pretends to think about his answer for only a short enough time to play his tongue around the lip of his bottle, watching Sakamoto watch him do it. “None to speak of, no,” he shrugs.

“Now _there’s_ a surprise!” Sakamoto slaps his own knee, and it would seem like a downright insulting attempt at flattery if Takasugi didn’t recognize it for the totally idiosyncratic affectation that it is.

“I knew it was you right away- back on the street there, as soon as I saw yer face, I mean- but boy, I was _surprised!_ Who’da thunk there was such a looker under all the grimy armor back then.” He pauses, and massages his chin with a crooked shape as close to “coy” as he can force his big mouth into. “Gotta say- almost regret that I never tried at anythin’, all that time ago.”

Takasugi scoffs, and sips from his bottle again. The drink is warm in his throat and chest. Compliments, unfortunately for Sakamoto, have no sway over him. Even if they are slightly entertaining in their foolishness. Besides-

“You’re not telling me you had the _time_ for regret, not tumbling around between all those bedrolls the way you did!”

The taste of the alcohol has grown somewhat pleasant again, Takasugi is content to make note of.

“ _You_ may have paid no heed to _me,_ but it was goddamn impossible to avoid all the rumours about Tatsuma the Maneater-” Sakamoto’s face blossoms into wildly eager curiosity- “and before you even ask, _not many of them_ were positive.”

The crestfallen slump in his shoulders is worthy of a few loud, genuine barks of laughter.

“The only positive review I ever heard was of your enthusiasm,” Takasugi goads, and finishes his bottle. “I even heard that Zura and Gintoki came to an agreement on the subject, once, that--”

The inside of Takasugi’s mouth sours worse than if it were full of blood.

The stuff in his veins runs ice cold, and there’s that slow, creeping pain filling the empty space in his head behind his eye sockets.

Idiotic.

So utterly, sickeningly stupid that he could just laugh.

So he laughs. Breathless, delighted. Hideously, wretchedly ugly.

Hilarious. Truly.

Sakamoto is still just watching him from across the table, leaning back on his palms, eyes wide awake.

“-At any rate, I find it bloody hard to believe that _you’ve_ ever felt true _regret_ for something.”

Takasugi has no real desire to smooth the wrinkles in his expression or tone of voice. The corners of his mouth, the rigor mortis of that nauseatingly pathetic diversion more towards himself than Sakamoto, can stay where they are. He cares less and less by the moment.

“Haha! I said _almost,_ remember?” Sakamoto swiftly offers a correction, and with another sharp throb behind his eye sockets Takasugi suspects that he is being catered to.

“I learned pretty quick I was mistaken ‘bout it, o’ course,” he prattles. “But I thought you were just a _mite_ too young-lookin’.”

Takasugi’s smile deepens viciously. He’s glad for the plunging, goring twist of ecstatic frustration through his stomach.

This is how it should be. _This_ is how it should feel.

“You had yer own rumours floatin’ about camp, ya know,” Sakamoto offers, with his own wonky approximation of slyness.

“ _Oh?”_ Takasugi steeples his fingers beneath his chin and leans forward on the table to indicate his _rapt_ interest, with a quick and nasty show of teeth. “Nothing quite like yours, I’m sure.”

“Rightcha are,” Sakamoto admits, and his look shifts into some mocking approach towards apologetic. “I heard there was a pool for a little while between some o’ the folks, about how old you _actually_ were. I think the lowest number I ever heard ‘em give was fifteen, ah-ha _ha!”_

Takasugi maintains his silent eye contact, with an ichor-sweet smile at his lips.

“Most of ‘em cut that right out after they got a good look at whatcha could do, ‘course. _Then_ it was a pool about yer height, in precise centimetres, ahahaha.”

“I wonder,” Takasugi posits carefully at his first opening, his pulse burning bright hot and hungry atop his stomach. “Did you talk an _awful_ lot about my measurements with all the people you fucked? I find it hard to believe that went over very well.”

Sakamoto throws his head back in sheer delight while he laughs, the way he did when Takasugi put a weapon up to his throat.

“Wouldn’t know,” he says, meeting Takasugi’s gaze with an eagerness that is _definitely_ different now. “I wasn’t interested _,_ remember?”

Takasugi gets deliberately to his feet and kicks over the table. It was almost empty, so the majority of the detritus he feels trapped between its sanded underside and the floor when he takes a step across is broken china. The flame within the paper lamp gutters and extinguishes as it hits the floor.

He plants the ball of his foot on Sakamoto’s shoulder and uses it to kick him down on to his back, and sits atop his chest with his knees apart. Sakamoto lets him do it.

“And what about now, Sakamoto Tatsuma?” He rests an arm atop one of his thighs, sheathed dagger within easy reach. “I think your _interest_ is clear, but is that all you’re gonna let it be?”

“I knew ya’d wanna be on top,” Sakamoto grins. “It’s right there in yer name, after all.”

Takasugi reaches behind him to pull the holstered gun from Sakamoto’s belt, where he’d caught a glimpse of it earlier through a flutter in his brightly coloured overcoat. Again, Sakamoto lets him do it.

He turns the pistol around in his grip, contemplates it. He finds the safety, some pointlessly fancy-looking thing, and depresses it easily.

“Mind if I ask just whatcha plan on doin’ with that?”

Sakamoto’s long body is lithe and tense beneath Takasugi’s weight. It would be an easy thing for someone of his build and stature to reverse their positions, and the prospect of that is certainly exciting too, but Takasugi is simply enraptured by the way that he refuses to try.

“Nothing so crude as a threat,” he says, positively kind and reassuring. “This may come as a surprise, but I _am_ something of… How exactly did you put it? An _enterprisin’ type._ ”

“Music to my ears,” Sakamoto says, and it almost sounds like he means it. “So? Whaddya propose?”

“A trade,” Takasugi sneers down at him, through the sight of his own gun. “Goods, for services. Simple, right?”

“Usually it is, yup,” Sakamoto admits, with the manner of someone relaxing under a cloudy blue sky instead of an armed criminal. “Let’s hear it, then!” Another sunny grin, full of optimistic good humour.

“I’d like to offer you an opportunity to invest.” Takasugi prods the tip of Sakamoto’s chin with his big toe.

“Fantastic! What sorta outfit you runnin’, then? The Kaientai merchant fleet’s always happy ta support a worthy cause. Don’t tell me- a non-profit? It _is_ pretty tough to get yer hands on government backin’, these days.”

The vague uncertainty that had been misting through Takasugi’s consideration finally vanishes, and gives way to full, triumphant clarity.

A genuine, elated grin pulls at his mouth.

He knew it.

“ _Some_ see our endeavours as a charity, I’m sure. But I think you’ve misunderstood. I said I want to trade for _services,_ if you can recall.”

He had his doubts, to be sure- it’s apparent, still, that Sakamoto _doesn’t_ know far more than he does know. But his utter passivity, from the start to the finish of this worthless charade of dumb innocence- ultimately this was the most damning evidence.

A competent actor, indeed.

“Right,” Sakamoto agrees, eyes gleaming. “I forgot. So? How can I _serve_ ya, good sir?”

Takasugi presses the barrel of Sakamoto’s gun hard into his forehead, finger on the trigger. “You can stay out of my way.”

“Well, that sounds awfully simple.” His gaze is still steady, and his mouth is still smiling. Always, always smiling.

“It _really_ is.” Takasugi’s outstretched arm is firm and motionless.

“So?” Sakamoto asks. “What're these goods I'm tradin' for?”

“However many bullets you've got loaded into this piece of yours,” Takasugi purrs victoriously, giving the trigger a flirty little tap. Sakamoto doesn't even hint at flinching. "They get to stay stay in here," a brief pause to demonstrate, "instead of ending up _here_ ," and gives another slower, more deliberate press forward again into his forehead.

__

“Ah- _haha!!_. I think I gotcha. Yeah, seems fair to me.”

__

“I assume we've got ourselves a deal.”

__

“Yup! Deal's a deal- pleasure doin' business with ya, _sir_.”

__

Sakamoto’s hands are still relaxed at his sides on the floor beneath Takasugi’s spread knees, but he feels one of them make a small twitch through a vibration in the tatami.

__

“Wanna shake on it?” he asks, in a tone of voice betraying that he thinks he is making an exceptionally clever joke.

__

“Don’t bother,” Takasugi says, and takes the gun away from Sakamoto’s temple. He places it on the floor behind him and gives it a hard shove, sending it spinning into a far corner of the room.

__

“Nice underwear, by the way!” Sakamoto exclaims brightly. “Black’s a classic choice, I think it suits ya damn well. Though I _did_ hope for a while there that you were goin’ commando, ahahaha!”

__

Takasugi sighs through his nose in irritation and gives a quick roll of his eye, pulling his arms free out of his sleeves.

__

“Just wonderin’,” Sakamoto prods, _still_ feeling the need to talk at this juncture where he’s raised his large-palmed, bony-fingered hands (Finally, he _moves!_ ) around the back and beneath the bunched up hem of Takasugi’s kimono to feel at his behind. “Is _this_ part of our deal, too?”

__

“If you want to see it that way, I won’t stop you,” Takasugi states as he lowers his knees the rest of the way to the floor. “I don’t care.” He doesn’t.

__

“Gotcha,” Sakamoto says, simply.

__

Takasugi sidles his body further down atop Sakamoto’s torso, letting him continue to grope as he pleases. When he’s got enough room to do so he sits up, bringing them flush at the hips and bowing his neck to lay his mouth to Takasugi’s bare chest.

__

Thank god, Takasugi thinks, that he can take the most _obvious_ of hints at least.

__

There are teeth scraping him, then, in a pleasing enough way to draw a quick sigh from his throat. He digs his fingers into Sakamoto’s thick and curly mess of hair to keep him there, daring to think that they can _finally_ just be through with the odious work of talking.

__

Long and nimble fingers sliding around to his hips (though no musician’s feat of dexterity, to be sure), and clothed growing pressure tight beneath where he sits let Takasugi presume himself correct for a malicious stretch of time, before, wet and muffled against his heartbeat:

__

“Is that how _you’re_ gonna see it, then?”

__

Takasugi could just groan aloud. For fuck’s _sake._

__

“This is just a curiosity,” he states, steadying his voice through the resumed motion of a hot tongue against his chest. “And a reward, besides.”

__

Sakamoto’s fingers start to delve beneath Takasugi’s underwear but his mouth stalls, frustratingly, pulling away with the rest of his face so he can ask with a look of utter _oblivious_ wonder, “Just what’d I _do,_ to earn such a big treat?”

__

“It’s not a reward for _you,_ you fucking moron,” Takasugi snaps, grinding his hips down hard enough to get a flinch out of the absolute fucking moron. “I put in the effort to secure this agreement of ours, and I’m claiming some compensation.”

__

Sakamoto laughs, and Takasugi is just completely fed up with that by now so he sinks to the lowest point in Sakamoto’s lap to level their faces and thrusts his tongue into his mouth. He grabs one of his wrists and guides it back up to his chest.

__

From there it’s a simple matter of continuous, rolling pressure, of both Takasugi’s hips and his tongue and teeth, until he’s able to judge all the teasing no longer necessary from the way that Sakamoto has started to wiggle and squirm underneath him. For his part Sakamoto has been dutifully playing at the shape of Takasugi’s cock, half hard and growing wet, but that’s no longer necessary either.

__

Takasugi pushes him on to his back again, this time with his hand instead of his foot. He sits up on to his knees with his other hand splayed on the floor, then reaches down into the new space between their bodies to work at getting Sakamoto out of his pants.

__

There’s a satisfied huff from beyond the top of Takasugi’s head, and Sakamoto starts to return the gesture in kind, before he realizes the impossibility of it as long as both of Takasugi’s knees are still on the floor.

__

“Stop _helping,_ damn it,” Takasugi grumbles when he has to postpone his work on Sakamoto’s button fly, just so he can uncomfortably shift his weight around and deal with his own underwear himself. He kicks it away behind him vengefully.

__

“Ahaha, sorry,” Sakamoto only half-chuckles from the heated tension starting to earnestly affect his tone of voice. It sounds moderately quieter and deeper, now. It’s almost tolerable like this.

__

With an impatient sigh Takasugi grabs at the rumpled opening of Sakamoto’s haori and tears it wider, jostling loose his completely pointless sash in the process to reveal the final hurdle of his belt buckle. Sakamoto, as ever, lets him.

__

“Yer sure bein’ pushy,” he comments, sounding very obviously happier for it and sliding one of his hands up beneath his head.

__

“ _Assertive,_ ” Takasugi corrects him, with a quick and wry glance up at his face.

__

“Right, right. Ah, whoa-”

__

Maybe it’s at the harsh speed Takasugi uses to pull down his waistband, or maybe it’s at the comparative chill of the room hitting his cock (an adequate size and shape considering the proportions of its owner, Takasugi notes) as it comes free from his clothing- Sakamoto shivers, suddenly, and for the very first time since he came caterwauling along the road earlier in the evening, his smile is finally just _gone_ .

__

His mouth hangs open, of course, but it’s simply to gasp at the sight of Takasugi gripping him in place beneath his body while he makes a few perfunctory thrusts into himself with his fingers. Sakamoto’s brows are creased together and his eyes are fixed smouldering up at Takasugi’s body bracing back on its knees, and finally, there is no trace whatsoever of silliness or frivolity in his expression. Just uncomplicated, unmasked, quickly growing want.

__

Takasugi allows himself a spare moment just to relish in it, perched just shy of connection, holding the head of Sakamoto’s cock hot and gently pulsing up to his open body. He’s greedy for it himself, his lungs full to burning with the swell of desire and expectation. But for the desperate, almost pained look of encroaching pleasure twisting Sakamoto’s stupid grinning face beyond easy recognition- Takasugi is _ravenous_.

__

He wants to absolutely ruin this man. He wants to contort his insipid pleasant cheer into something ugly, and violent, and selfish, and take _everything_ that spills forth from that into himself until it fills and rends him apart. Takasugi’s heart is bursting in his ribcage from the hunger of it.

__

He takes all of Sakamoto raw and mostly dry, fully seating himself with a long and torturously slow drop and curl of his hips. The clinging, sticking, dragging pain, a million white hot sparks shooting up the full line of his back, is exquisite. It’s sweet, and harsh, honey-thick waves of cowing physical ecstasy pulling Takasugi’s lower back in spasms into the perfect curving shape for him to accept every bit of this flawless torment into himself.

__

His knees are shaking like those of a newborn deer, and his mouth has fallen wide open to let in every bit of air that could feed the roaring, howling blaze of pleasure burning through his stomach, and Sakamoto’s hands are _desperately_ squeezing his ass while he gasps and keens on the floor like he’s dying of a punctured lung.

__

“Sh- shit-- _AH--”_

__

Sakamoto’s voice is cracked and broken, his head thrown back, and his clothed thighs are shivering hard enough against the back of Takasugi’s bare legs where they’ve snapped up to try and help him thrust that he can feel it as though part of his own body.

__

Takasugi feels him throb harder and bigger inside of him through the tacky, intimate touch of their naked unobstructed flesh. There’s already a slow, viscous glob of cowper’s starting to ease the friction down from painful, but Takasugi wants to be still and enjoy _this_ for as long as he possibly can.

__

“Ti- Time,” Sakamoto begs in a stutter, as he succeeds to pull his head up off the floor. “Time out-”

__

The look on his face is marvellous. He’s flushed dark red and sweaty high into his hairline, his eyes are already half-lidded and dulling from overstimulation, and there’s the faint moisture of forming teardrops glistening with promise at his lashes.

__

Takasugi can think of nothing, now, that would feel better than making him cry.

__

But he can wait. He can be patient.

__

Sakamoto has shakily raised one of his hands up to his face, pulling the weight of his scarf loose and away from his gangly and delicate neck.

__

(Takasugi wants to sink his teeth deep into it, feel Sakamoto’s pulse stutter into his mouth thick and liquid hot like he’s just finished sucking his cock.)

__

His other hand relinquishes its clammy grip on Takasugi’s ass, too, and Sakamoto sluggishly wiggles on to his elbows so he can pull them free from the sweaty confines of his overcoat. The vibrations of his upper body movement radiate down to his waist and his hips, and distantly give his length some mildly dizzying fidgets against the flexing grip of Takasugi’s innards. His teeth grit and come apart again with the sound of another struggling, agonized sigh.

__

While Sakamoto is making a pillow of his extra clothing under the back of his neck, Takasugi sees the raised scar tissue made starkly visible on his old sword arm when he lifts it with a bent elbow in adjusting his repurposed bundle of outerwear. Tender and pale, against the blush of laboured heat and the faint shine of sweat.

__

Tempted by the hazy, fulfilling pangs of impatient lust travelling up through his stomach and chest cavity, settling heavy and comfortably thick and hot across Takasugi’s cheeks and behind his forehead, he reaches out the tip of a finger to trace all the way down the path of the wound, to the base of Sakamoto’s open palm.

__

He remembers it fresh, its colours inverted: the surrounding skin paper white and sickly from the shock of physical trauma, the deep, dark, pulsing red of fresh blood and exposed muscle, bare to the smoky wind.

__

Sakamoto’s face, at the same time lack and wrenched taut, from the confusion of having been torn open as easily as an envelope filled with paint.

__

Sakamoto’s face- pointed up towards Takasugi, bleary and painful-present, flushing dark with arousal, giving him a look more nakedly and smoothly come apart than the flesh around a crippling wound.

__

The hot, quavering moisture of his palms lands upon Takasugi’s kneecaps, which still give trembling fits from the sweet overfull shocks of throbbing sensation up through his gut and lower back. Sakamoto’s large, warm, clumsy-looking hands stroke up along Takasugi’s legs and find their place around the back of his waist again, some blunt fingertips resting ticklish-curling-probing near the shuddering and taut stretch of muscle around the connection between their bodies.

__

“I’m so glad,” Sakamoto gasps, his voice tight with pleasure like it’s hurting him, his features wrecked into tension and humourless passion. “So glad that I saw you.”

__

He looks into Takasugi’s eye with a weak and trembling _something_.

__

“I really didn’t think I’d ever get to, ever again, after- I thought for sure, that, ya’d just- gone off alone, and--”

__

It comes back, resilient and clever- fragile, _sad-_

__

A smile, fighting and winning to pull the edges of Sakamoto’s mouth back into the safety of that pathetic, loathsome, carefree mask.

__

No.

__

No more.

__

_Enough._

__

Takasugi feels a hateful, _angry_ stab of knifepoint pain behind his eye, and something similar piercing through the hot breaths coming shorter and thicker in and out from his lungs and his mouth. His lips go taut and thin when they shut tightly, twisting unhappily, the _rest_ of him twisting, twisting tighter and tighter down and in--

__

He makes a violently sudden thrust backwards on his hips, jarring and squeezing Sakamoto’s cock inside of him, raising a mind-numbing cloud of star-bright individual shocks along every minute point of sticky hot friction, that scatter and burst all the way up his back to his shoulder blades and the base of his neck. Sakamoto jolts and writhes underneath him and his hands squeeze tighter, his thighs push and shiver uselessly up against Takasugi’s body, his chin drops in against his own chest with a strangled half-cry.

__

Takasugi does it again and throttles the breath out of himself, shakes a clipped and vocal gasp free from the back of his own throat, then doesn’t stop.

__

He drives himself over and over, back and forth, on to the painful and perfect stretch of sharp, straining, blood-flushed vitality struggling as deeply into him as it will go. Takasugi fills himself without heed, clawing along the exposed slippery skin of Sakamoto’s chest and feeling his nails score marks into it, shamelessly using his cock to cruelly and viciously scrub away every other single thing on the inside of himself but for this desperately climbing heat.

__

Takasugi keeps just stoking it higher and brighter without thought or care, aware of the efforts Sakamoto makes to follow and try to support his pitching movements, and utterly negligent of them. He chases down the building, clambering pressure beginning to grow through his hips, making them start to squeeze and shake beyond his intentional actions. He chases it single-minded and merciless, like a pack animal on a hunt with the scent of blood, a slavering maw cracked open to rip the heart out of himself with his own teeth.

__

Sakamoto thrashes beneath him suddenly, with a near-silent breath pulled in sharply through his nose, and Takasugi hears himself yelp in bodily joy at the mindlessly possessive and crushing grip on him that Sakamoto uses to shove his ejaculate as fast and hard up into Takasugi as he can.

__

Takasugi feels his back curl in total submission to the jerking thrusts filling him hotter and tighter than ever before, bending him down over Sakamoto’s body while thick and languorous streams of seed flood the inside of him. His mind wrenches up and bursts on the peak of blissful emptiness he’s been pursuing with sweaty and roughshod frenzy. He finishes quick and hard in the desperate grip of his own hand, groaning through his teeth with his eye squeezed shut.

__

The trip back down is long and bumpy.

__

Takasugi feels himself go boneless and weak not long after Sakamoto comes out of his most wrenching throes, but the goading ever present tension of the cock still inside of him keeps his shoulders drawn up and rigid. The walls of his innards keep clutching and squeezing for more feeling, dragging painful prolonged shudders far beyond what his body can supply anymore, hypersensitivity cruelly feeding and consuming itself with impossible and uncomfortable persistence.

__

Takasugi’s forehead is pressed damp and sticky into Sakamoto’s chest when it’s finally over, his abdomen sore and totally wrung out, his slowing breaths hot against his own face with nowhere else to escape. There are ridges scored into the thin flesh of his knees from scraping down into the tatami.

__

The inside of his head is blessedly, miraculously, completely vacant and quiet.

__

***

__

(Later, after he’s picked himself back up and promptly excused himself from the restaurant with casual and noncommittal ease, walking back through the night towards the Kiheitai’s offshore base-)

__

(Later, when the wretched machinery of his thoughts runs at its typical undistracted speed, prodding at every one of his own subtle reasonings and decisions- at his emotions--)

__

(Later, laid in bed wide awake, staring dimly at the ceiling of his quarters in the dark, while the floor rocks and creaks gently beneath him like an old and failing cradle, Takasugi realizes something.)

__

(He is treacherously, miserably glad, that Sakamoto never knew the name Yoshida Shouyou from an empty hole in the ground.)

__

**Author's Note:**

> look. you have gotta trust that my endgame for them, FUCK canon, is sakamoto buying takasugi his own ship and takasugi using sakamoto's credit card to buy weed online and the 2 of them spending their time just watching boring shit on netflix
> 
> but the starting out: it's rough


End file.
